I’m sitting by a stunted creek
skimming a book when he walks up.
A voice soft as the distant banter of a vanishing crowd.
“I’m looking,” he says,
“for a place deep enough to drown.”
He’s got a cat with him, and it’s tiny,
scared of everything.
The squirrels menace it
explains this sprite who carries
a haircut run over by a twice-sold truck
and backpack slammed in a porch door, once, three times.
Even the birds of prey
spook his little cat for sport.
Somehow—and I feel I am already his confidant,
“Somehow he’s got to learn to walk on his own.”
Now he is amazed that I use a two-dollar bill
For a bookmark. “Two,” he rhapsodizes, “how
do you know how important two is?”
He tells me of the power of paper,
points out the men on the back of the bill,
how they huddle—chanting magic
to keep back the cold—
and how Thomas Jefferson
snatches a scrap of parchment from the center of the stack
to be the Declaration of Independence.
He offers me a trade, and I take it,
having another bill like it at home.
“Anything you find,” as he directs me
to a pocket on the backpack.
I choose a crumpled Three of Spades,
tilt it in the afternoon sun to see the ink.
Three is more than two. How came I
not to know this?
Whence came these barriers,
these hundred half-eroded culverts,
between me and the numbers?
How became it so hard to talk to spirits
that I needed a shade herding a cat
to sneak up and coach me through the conversation?
When I turned away,
he went home to some manor house
to kick off his wet shoes, and put his feet up
and laugh about how he had me going.
But, in the hours when my head throbs
and the mist loses its luster
and I can’t buy a place to start from,
I see him still walking,
beating birds away from his cat,
strolling in the canyon of the Snake River,
tipping his hat to every fly-fisherman,
Excuse me, sir,
but I’m looking for somewhere deep enough to drown.
skimming a book when he walks up.
A voice soft as the distant banter of a vanishing crowd.
“I’m looking,” he says,
“for a place deep enough to drown.”
He’s got a cat with him, and it’s tiny,
scared of everything.
The squirrels menace it
explains this sprite who carries
a haircut run over by a twice-sold truck
and backpack slammed in a porch door, once, three times.
Even the birds of prey
spook his little cat for sport.
Somehow—and I feel I am already his confidant,
“Somehow he’s got to learn to walk on his own.”
Now he is amazed that I use a two-dollar bill
For a bookmark. “Two,” he rhapsodizes, “how
do you know how important two is?”
He tells me of the power of paper,
points out the men on the back of the bill,
how they huddle—chanting magic
to keep back the cold—
and how Thomas Jefferson
snatches a scrap of parchment from the center of the stack
to be the Declaration of Independence.
He offers me a trade, and I take it,
having another bill like it at home.
“Anything you find,” as he directs me
to a pocket on the backpack.
I choose a crumpled Three of Spades,
tilt it in the afternoon sun to see the ink.
Three is more than two. How came I
not to know this?
Whence came these barriers,
these hundred half-eroded culverts,
between me and the numbers?
How became it so hard to talk to spirits
that I needed a shade herding a cat
to sneak up and coach me through the conversation?
When I turned away,
he went home to some manor house
to kick off his wet shoes, and put his feet up
and laugh about how he had me going.
But, in the hours when my head throbs
and the mist loses its luster
and I can’t buy a place to start from,
I see him still walking,
beating birds away from his cat,
strolling in the canyon of the Snake River,
tipping his hat to every fly-fisherman,
Excuse me, sir,
but I’m looking for somewhere deep enough to drown.